WSJwine Discovery Club Unboxing

When you sign up for the WSJwine Discovery Club you'll be giving yourself a gift - every 3 months! After the introductory offer, a stellar $69.99 for 12 bottles plus a free corkscrew (to help you access your treats more smoothly), you'll pay only $149.99 per shipment plus shipping. The price per bottle remains very reasonable and you'll enjoy discovering new flavors. We were very excited to receive our first case!

The wine is carefully packed and promptly delivered. The shipment includes informational sheets for every single bottle of wine, including background on the wine itself, the region it is grown in, suggested food pairings, and notes from the winemakers themselves. Just make sure you're feeling strong and bending with your knees when you pick this box up to open it - it's a good workout.

There was an extensive variety of wines included in the shipment. Nine different wines total, allowing you a second bottle of particular favorites.

The wines in our first shipment of the Discovery Club - all reds for this household - included:

Chateau Millegrand Mourral Grande Réserve

Pagos de Tahola Rioja Reserva

J Opi Malbec

The Inaugural R Collection by Raymond Vineyards

Las Barracas Gran Reserva Cabernet Tempranillo

Saracosa Rosso di Toscana

Meridion par Pierre Perrin Cotes du Rhone

Tenuta di Somaro Aglianico Primitivo

Pinot d'Oro Pinot Noir

Some light Googling, and extensive use of the services from our friends at Wine-Searcher.com, taught us a couple of things about the wines contained in this shipment from WSJwine. First, the average retail price per bottle ranges from about $12-$20. This means you're getting the introductory box at more than 50% off, and subsequent shipments will save you at least 20% off retail prices. Fantastic! Second, a lot of the wines you'll receive are hard to find, so you'll be getting access to wines that you wouldn't otherwise be exposed to. WSJwine sells by the bottle and the case, so when you strike gold through their Discovery Club you can re-order more of your favorites.

Now what's an unboxing without a little tasting? Normally we'd go straight for the Pinot Noir around here, but there was something about the glamorous, gold embellishment on the bottle of Las Barracas Gran Reserva that we couldn't resist.

The tasting notes mention vanilla, tobacco, and berry flavors. In layman's flavor terms, this is simply an excellent middle-of-the-road wine. While they suggest it goes well with pork and cured meats, we decided that was merely a suggestion. Instead, we broke into this bottle with a side of dark chocolate peanut butter cups, because it seemed like an excellent fit. They describe this as a medium bodied red, but it was full enough to complement dark chocolate, adding it to our list of potential re-orders.

Cheers to the WSJwine Discovery Club for introducing us to a new favorite. We're looking forward to exploring the rest of the shipment, residing beautifully on our wine rack.